The creator of GPT doesn’t have a PhD. The creator of PyTorch doesn’t have a PhD. The research lead at Cursor dropped out of NEU. You don’t need a PhD or a top school to become a great researcher or engineer. You can just do things!

I’ve always been wary of people who overplay their degrees or their school. OpenAI hired many undergrads, some not even from top universities, as researchers. Many successful people come from what look like underdog backgrounds. Passion, agency, taste, resilience >> degree